


Smaller on the Outside

by EachPeachPearPlum



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 22:08:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EachPeachPearPlum/pseuds/EachPeachPearPlum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's smaller on the outside," she says, and he wonders if maybe she's right, if maybe the miracle is how you fit the box around the world rather than the world inside the box.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smaller on the Outside

"It's smaller on the outside," she says, and he doesn't know why it comes as such a surprise, why it seems to mean so much.

But maybe he, like everyone else, has a lack of imagination (although, of course, that is not something he'll share, not now, not ever). Maybe he, like everyone else, sees a box and expects what is inside to match what is outside, at least in size. Maybe he, like everyone else, believes too readily in what he sees, only to be surprised, awed, amazed, by what else he sees when he cracks it open. Maybe he, like everyone else, wants to be bigger on the inside.

Human beings are such very small creatures, and their minds are so very tiny. Even his own mind is small (although nowhere near as minuscule as those of humanity), but the box it lives in, the brain and bones and flesh that keeps his glorious mind safe and whole? That is minuscule, and if everyone judged the size of his intellect by the size of his head, it would only be expected that their tiny, human minds believe him to be exactly the same. The TARDIS is bigger on the inside, and so, so is The Doctor. So is the world.

Everything is bigger on the inside, a universe so incredibly huge packed into a parcel so incredibly tiny. It just _is_ , and that is the magic of the TARDIS, the way it opens a person's eyes, shows their minute, mortal minds how much _more_ there is to the world, how much _more_ can be hidden inside something so small.

_It's bigger on the inside_. It always has been; from the beginning to the end, that is what people have said, such awe on their faces, such wonder at the knowledge that inside their tiny, insignificant lives, there is something so impossibly large. _It's bigger on the inside_. Always.

Until now.

"It's smaller on the outside," she says, and the look of wonder on her face is no less beautiful than that he has seen on everyone else's before, but the words are different. She falls in love with the realms of possibilities the TARDIS offers, the same possibilities The Doctor fell in love with when he stole his girl away so many years ago. She falls as suddenly and as thoroughly as everyone does, and The Doctor feels a little of his conviction waver, feels his determination to be alone and not _ruin any more lives_ crack. Just a little, the tiniest splintering of ice that is still thick and strong enough to walk on, but not quite as strong as it was mere moments ago.

"It's smaller on the outside," she says, delight and _fire_ filling her voice, fire to melt the ice threatening the human world, fire to melt the ice that has taken hold of The Doctor since he lost Amy and Rory.

"It's smaller on the outside," she says, and he wonders if maybe she's right. If maybe everyone's amazement is the wrong way around. If maybe the miracle is how you fit the box around the world rather than the world inside the box.

If maybe she, Clara, is someone special, someone amazing, someone worth rejoining the world for. If maybe he has found someone to start running with again.

Then, of course, she asks him if there's a kitchen, and all of his wonderings seem a little ridiculous.


End file.
